Thursday, April 20, 2017

The Church is not a Business

Jesus gave us a pretty strong clue when he cleared the Temple in Jerusalem of moneychangers during the final week of his earthly ministry. He said,“It is written, ‘My house shall be house of prayer,’ but you have made it a den of robbers.”Now we could argue about the relation of the Temple to the Church, but I conclude that the church’s function is close at this point, and that we are to be about meeting together with God, not about getting people’s money.

Jesus is not making this up on the spot. He is quotingIsaiah 56:7, which promises that the temple, once material, now spiritual, is to be ‘house’ of prayer for all peoples. The “den of robbers” statement comes from Jeremiah 7:11, and the description mirrors the offenses of Jesus’ day. It is amazing how well Jesus knows and uses the Scriptures, almost as though he had actually read them, and thought about them. Or maybe, that he had a hand in authoring them.

So when we think about the churches that we attend, can we honestly say that what is most obvious about our assemblies, as different as they may be, is the practice of prayer? I doubt it. Prayer is difficult. It does not draw crowds. It feels like a waste of time.

When Solomon built that first temple for the Lord, he recognized thatno building built by human hands can contain Him. It was merely a house in which God’s people could offer sacrifices, prayers, to God. That would be it’s highest purpose; it’s best purpose. The image from the physical temple that is so closely associated with prayer is the burning of incense. You would smell it as soon as you entered in. It would be obvious. But today, in our churches, is prayer as obvious as was that offering of incense?

Prayer is not a marketing device. “We are the church that prays!” It’s not something to start doing so that we can feel self-righteous about ourselves: “We may be small, but at least we pray.” It’s simply that, according to the Scriptures - and it is so simple - Christians pray. It’s what they do, together, and apart. Christians pray.

You can have a church without a building. You can have a church without money. You can have a church without a pastor, and programs. A group of people can meet, sitting on the grass, and read, or, if lacking a copy of Scriptures, recall what God has said. And then, they will pray, perhaps better than most of us, since they aren’t so distracted and compelled to keep feeding the machine that we call “church.”